The world is a cage, some have escaped, some have not.
The male protagonist did not escape. He seems to have been living for his family all his life. He almost died in a coal mine in Germany, and lost a leg in Vietnam. He remembered arguing with his wife before going to Vietnam. He said his life was his own. ? At the end of the movie, he told his imaginary father that the family took good care of him, his younger brother went to Seoul University, his younger sister was found, and his mother was happy, but he was very tired.
He was burdened all his life, for the sake of his family, and occasionally gratified, but he never seemed to break free until he finally agreed to sell the store. He never escaped the shackles of the world in his life.
Fate didn't even give him a chance to break free from the shackles, he didn't know existentialism, he didn't read Heidegger, Sartre, he didn't know existentialism: this world has no meaning, no burden, it is given by society, borne by ourselves, we actually There is another choice, or we still insist on the same choice, but with a different mentality, a kind of calmness and relief of being responsible for our own choices.
He had never read Somerset Maugham's "The Shackles of Human Nature", and he didn't think like the protagonist of the novel, he suddenly understood the nothingness of the world, and he didn't have to bear so much for his inner obsession.
There may be several kinds of people in the world: some who can't see nothingness, just silently accept the burden of the world and move forward all the way. Some people who see through the world without any doubt, define their own, and then make new choices based on the present, although they may be consistent with the previous ones
Although I cried three times for the male lead, I also regretted that the male lead could not escape the shackles and let go of his obsession in his life. Fortunately, he was lucky. Believe me, there are people who have been overwhelmed with life and have nowhere to go and no hope.
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